The transfer of information over computer networks has become an increasingly important means by which institutions, corporations, and individuals do business. Computer networks have grown over the years from independent and isolated entities established to serve the needs of a single group into vast internets which interconnect disparate physical networks and allow them to function as a coordinated system. Currently, the largest computer network in existence is the Internet. The Internet is a worldwide interconnection of computer networks that communicate using a common protocol. Millions of computers, from low end personal computers to high end super computers, are connected to the Internet.
The Internet has emerged as a large community of electronically connected users located around the world who readily and regularly exchange information. The Internet continues to serve its original purposes of providing access to and exchange of information among government agencies, laboratories, and universities for research and education. In addition, the Internet has rapidly become a global electronic marketplace of goods and services. This transformation of the Internet into a global marketplace was driven in large part by the introduction of an information system known as the World Wide Web (“the web”). The web is a unique distributed database designed to give wide access to a large universe of documents. The database records of the web are in the form of documents known as “pages”, with one or more related pages forming a “website”. Web pages reside on web servers and are accessible via the Internet. The web is therefore a vast database of information dispersed across countless individual computer systems that is constantly changing and has no recognizable organization. Computers connected to the Internet may access the web pages via a program known as a browser, which typically has a graphical user interface. One powerful technique supported by web browsers is known as hyperlinking, which permits web page authors to create links to other web pages which users can then retrieve by using simple point-and-click commands on the web browser.
Web pages may be constructed in any one of a variety of formatting conventions, such as Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), and may include multimedia information content such as graphics, audio, and moving pictures. Any person with a computer and a connection to the Internet may access any publicly accessible page posted on the web. Thus, a presence on the World Wide Web has the capability to introduce a worldwide base of consumers to businesses, individuals, and institutions seeking to advertise their products and services to potential customers. Furthermore, the ever increasing sophistication in the design of web pages, made possible by the exponential increase in data transmission rates and computer processing speeds, makes the web an increasingly attractive medium for advertising and other business purposes, as well as for the free flow of information. The widely recognized importance of gaining a presence on the World Wide Web has led to the proliferation of “web hosts” which provide services and web servers for establishing and maintaining web pages and websites for clients. Thus, for example, a business client setting up a commercial website would contact a web host to host the website, with the web host charging an initial fee and monthly subscription fee. The web host typically has its own website through enabling clients to sign-up for web hosting services over the Internet.
The availability of powerful new tools that facilitate the development and distribution of Internet content has led to a proliferation of information, products, and services offered on the Internet and dramatic growth in the number of consumers using the Internet. As a result, directories and search engines have been developed to index and search the information available on the web and thereby help Internet users locate information of interest. These search services enable consumers to search the Internet for a listing of websites or web pages based on a specific topic, product, or service of interest.
Search services are, after e-mail, the most frequently used tool on the Internet. As a result, websites providing search services have offered advertisers significant reach into the Internet audience and have given advertisers the opportunity to target consumer interests based on keyword or topical search requests. In a web-based search on an Internet search engine, a user enters a search term comprising one or more keywords, which the search engine then uses to generate a listing of web pages that the user may access via a hyperlink. Many search engines and website directories rely upon processes for assigning results to keywords that often generate irrelevant search results. The automated search technology that drives many search engines implements complex database search algorithms that select and rank web pages based on multiple criteria such as keyword density and keyword location. In addition, search engines that use automated search technology to catalog search results generally rely on invisible website descriptions, or “meta tags”, that are authored by website promoters. Website owners may freely tag their sites as they choose. Consequently, some website promoters insert popular search terms into their website meta tags that are not relevant to the website, because by doing so they may attract additional consumer attention at little to no marginal cost. Finally, many different websites can have similar meta tags, and search engines of the type described above are simply not equipped to prioritize results in accordance with consumers' preferences.
Search engines and website directories may also rely on the manual efforts of limited editorial staffs to review web page information. Because comprehensive manual review and indexing of an unpredictable, randomly updated database such as the web is an impossible task, search engine results are often incomplete or out-of-date. Moreover, as the volume and diversity of Internet content has grown, on many popular web search sites, consumers must frequently click-through multiple branches of a hierarchical directory to locate websites responsive to their search request, a process that is slow and unwieldy from the consumer's standpoint.
Furthermore, the use of banner advertising for generating website traffic follows traditional advertising approaches and fails to utilize the unique attributes of the Internet. In the banner advertising model, website promoters seeking to promote and increase their web exposure often purchase space on the pages of popular commercial websites. The website promoters usually fill this space with a colorful graphic, known as a banner, advertising their own website. The banner may act as a hyperlink to the promoter's site. Like traditional advertising, banner advertising on the Internet is typically priced on an impression basis with advertisers paying for exposures to potential consumers. Banners may be displayed at every page access, or, on search engines, may be targeted to search terms. Nonetheless, impression-based advertising inefficiently exploits the Internet's direct marketing potential, as the click-through rate, the rate of consumer visits a banner generates to the promoter's website, may be quite low. Website promoters are therefore paying for exposure to many consumers who are not interested in the product or service being promoted, as most visitors to a website seek specific information and may not be interested in the information announced in the banner. Likewise, the banner often fails to reach interested individuals, since the banner is not generally searchable by search engines and the interested persons may not know where on the web to view the banner.
One approach that has emerged to help web page owners target their web exposure and distribute information to the attention of interested consumers on a current and comprehensive basis is the “bid-for-position” search engine (also known as “bid-for-location” and “pay-per-click” search engine). Under this approach, website owners or promoters maintain an account with the bid-for-position search engine and register respective competitive bid amounts on keywords related to web page or website content. Search results are returned by the bid-for-position search engine in an order determined by the competitive bids, with the website of the high bidder for the searched keyword being listed first and so on. Accordingly, under the bid-for-position model, website promoters can control the placement of their website link in search result listings so that their link is prominent in searches that are relevant to the content of their website. Because advertisers and promoters must pay for each click-through referral coming from the search result listing generated by the bid-for-position search engine, they have an incentive to select and bid on those search keywords that are most relevant to their website offerings and content. The higher an advertiser's position on a search result list, the higher likelihood of a “referral”; that is, the higher the likelihood that a consumer will be referred to the advertiser's website through the search result list. The openness of this advertising marketplace is further facilitated by publicly displaying, to consumers and other advertisers, the price bid by an advertiser on a particular search result listing.
At present, a website owner who signs up as a client of a web host may or may not be aware of the benefits of registering with search engines, particularly bid-for-position search engines, to increase traffic of interested consumers to its website. Moreover, if the website owner does register with a search engine, much of the same client information provided to the web host at the time of sign-up must again be provided to the search engine. Similar to web hosts, search engines have websites for signing up clients, in this case to advertising accounts.
Thus, it would be beneficial to clients to offer advertising services for promoting the client's website at the time the client signs up for web hosting services, and to streamline the sign-up process for the client so that signing up for advertising services involves little or no extra work.